Historical reality is less real than the profound truth it expresses and a mythological symbolism is infinitely more true than a fact deprived of symbolism.

Religions are cut off from one another by barriers of mutual incomprehension; one of the principal causes of this appears to be that the sense of the absolute stands on a different plane in each of them, so that what would seem to be points of comparison often prove not to be.

 

Elements resembling one another in form appear in such diverse contexts that their function and their nature too changes, at any rate to some extent; and this is so because of the infinitude of the All-Possible, which excludes precise repetition.

 

In short, the sufficient reason of a 'new' phenomenon is, from the point of view of the manifestation of possibilities, its difference in relation to 'antecedent' phenomena ...

 

The 'sense of the absolute' is not grafted exactly on the same organic element, as between one religion and another -whence the impossibility of making comparisons between the elements of religions simply from the outside - and this fact is shown clearly by the differing natures of conversions to Christianity and Islam: while conversion to Christianity seems in certain respects like the beginning of a great love, which makes all a man's past life look vain and trivial - it is a 'rebirth' after a 'death’- conversion to Islam is on the contrary like awakening from an unhappy love, or like sobriety after drunkenness, or again like the freshness of morning after a troubled

night.

 

In Christianity, the soul is 'freezing to death' in its congenital egoism, and Christ is the central fire which warms and restores it to life; in Islam, on the other hand, the soul is 'suffocating' in the constriction of the same egoism, and Islam appears as the cool immensity of space which allows it to 'breath' and to 'expand' towards the boundless. The 'central fire' is denoted by the cross; the 'immen-sity of space' by the Kaaba, the prayer-rug, the abstract interlacings of Islamic art.

 

There is, in every religion, not only a choice for the will between the beyond and the here-below, but also a choice for the intelligence between truth and error; there are however differences of correlation, in the sense that Christ is true because He is the Saviour (whence the importance that the phenomenal element assumes here) whilst when Islam has salvation in view it starts from a discrimination which is in the last analysis metaphysical (la ilaha illa 'Llah), and it is this Truth which saves; but whether it is a question of Christianity or of Islam or of any other traditional form, it is indeed the metaphysical truth which, thanks to its universality, determines the values of things. And as this truth envelops and penetrates all, there is in it neither 'here-below' nor 'beyond', nor any choice

by the will; only the universal essences count, and these are 'everywhere and nowhere'; there is, on this plane, no choice for the will to make, for, as Aristotle says, 'the soul is all that it knows'.

 

This contemplative serenity appears in the abstract freshness of mosques as also in many Romanesque churches and in certain elements of the best Gothic, particularly in the rose windows, which are like 'mirrors of gnosis' in these sanctuaries of love. . . .

 

A question which inevitably arises here is that of the historicity of the great phenomena of the religions: ought more confidence to be placed in that radiation which presents a maximum of historical evidence?

 

To this the reply must be that there is no metaphysical or spiritual difference between a truth manifested by temporal facts and a truth expressed by other symbols, under a mythological form for example; the modes of manifestation correspond to the mental requirements of the different groups of humanity. If certain mentalities prefer marvels that are empirically 'improbable' to historical 'reality', that is precisely because the marvellous (with which in any case no religion could dispense) indicates transcendence in relation to terrestrial facts; we are tempted to say that the aspect of improbability is the sufficient reason for the marvellous, and it is this unconscious need for feeling the essence of things which explains the tendency to exaggerate found among certain peoples; it is a trace of nostalgia for the Infinite.

 

Miracles denote an interference of the marvellous in the sensory realm; whoever admits miracles must also admit the principle of the marvellous as such, and even tolerate pious exaggeration on a certain plane.

 

The opportuneness of mythological marvels on the one hand and the existence of contradictions between religions on the other (which do not imply any intrinsic absurdity within the bounds of a given religion any more than the internal contradictions found in all religions are absurd), these factors, we

say, show in their own way that, with God, the truth is above all in the symbol's effective power of illumination and not in its literalness, and that is all the more evident since God, whose wisdom goes beyond all words, puts multiple meanings into a single expression. An obscurity in expression - whether elliptical or contradictory - often indicates a richness or a depth in meaning, and this it is which explains the apparent incoherences to be found in the sacred Scriptures.

 

God manifests in this way His transcendence in relation to the limitations of human logic; human language can be divine only in an indirect way, neither our words nor our logic being at the height of the divine purpose. The uncreated Word shatters created speech, whilst at the same time directing it towards concrete and saving truth.

 

Must the conclusion of all this then be that from the point of view of spirituality an historical basis has in itself less value than a mythological or purely metaphysical basis, on the grounds that principles are more important than phenomena?

 

Assuredly not, insofar as it is a question of symbolism; what has less value is an attribution to this historical basis of a significance greater than it should have, a substituting of it for the symbolic truth and the metaphysical reality it expresses; none the less the importance of historical fact remains intact in respect of sacred institutions.

 

From another point of view, it should be noted that a traditional narrative is always true; the more

or less mythical features which are imposed on the historical life of the Buddha, for instance, are so many ways of expressing spiritual realities which it would be difficult to express otherwise.

 

In cases where Revelation is most expressly founded on history, and to the extent that this is so, the historical mode is no doubt necessary: in a world which was heir to Jewish 'historicism' and to Aristotelian empiricism, Revelation could not fail to take wholly the form of an earthly event, without the adjunction of any non-historical symbolism; but we must observe that a too great insistence on historicity -not historicity as such- may somewhat obscure the metaphysical content of sacred facts, or their spiritual 'translucency' and can even end, in the form of abusive criticism, by 'eroding' history itself and by belittling what is too big for man's powers of conception.

 

Those who favour rigorous historicity against the mythologies of Asia will doubtless object that the historical truth furnishes proofs of the validity of the means of grace: in this context, it is necessary

to point out, firstly that historical proofs, precisely, could not be quite rigorous in this realm, and secondly that tradition as such, with all that it comprises in the way of symbolism, doctrine and sanctity (not to mention other more or less indeterminate criteria) furnishes much more unexceptionable proofs of the divine origin and the validity of rites; in a sense, the acceptance by tradition (and the development in sanctity) of a means of grace is a criterion far more convincing

than historicity, not to mention the intrinsic value of the Scriptures.

 

History is often incapable of verification; it is tradition, not criticism, which guarantees it, but it guarantees at the same time the validity of non-historical symbolisms. It is the actual and permanent

miracle of tradition which nullifies the objection that no man living has been a witness of sacred history; the saints are its witnesses in quite other fashion than the historians; to deny tradition as the guarantee of truth amounts in the end to asserting that there are effects without causes.

 

There is, doubtless, no truth more 'exact' than that of history; but what must be stressed is that there is a truth more 'real' than that of facts; the higher reality embraces the 'exactness', but the latter, on the contrary, is far from presupposing the former.

 

Historical reality is less 'real' than the profound truth it expresses and which myths likewise express; a mythological symbolism is infinitely more 'true' than a fact deprived of symbolism.

 

And that brings us back to what we were saying above, namely that the mythological or historical opportuneness of the marvellous, as also the existence of dogmatic antinomies, go to show that for God truth is above all in the efficacy of the symbol and not in the 'bare fact'.

 

From the point of view of historicity or of its absence, three degrees must be distinguished: mythology, qualified historicity and exact historicity. We find the first degree in all mythology properly so called, as also in the monotheistic accounts of the creation, and the second degree in the other 'prehistoric' narratives, whether they concern Noah or Jonah or the human avataras of Vishnu.

 

In judaism, rigorous historicity starts perhaps at Sinai; in Christianity, it appears in the whole of the New Testament, but not in the Apocrypha or the Golden Legend, which moreover are not canonical

works, a fact that has earned them a quite undeserved disregard, since symbolism is an essential vehicle of truth; lastly, in Islam, exact historicity attaches to the life of the Prophet and of his Companions, as well as to those of their sayings (ahadith) recognised by the tradition, but not to the stories concerning the pre-Islamic Prophets and events, which are woven of symbols certainly 'exact'

but more or less 'mythical'; to take them literally however is always to let oneself be inspired by their 'alchemical' virtue, even when a real understanding is lacking.

 

The historical perspective, with all its importance for a certain level of Christian doctrine, is however legitimate only insofar as it can be included in Platonic non-historicity.

 

Christian 'personalism' derives from the fact of the Incarnation, and then from the 'bhaktic' character of Christianity, a character which in no way prevents this religion from 'containing' metaphysics and gnosis, for Christ is 'Light of the world'; but gnosis is not for everyone, and a religion cannot be metaphysical in its actual form; on the other hand, Platonism, which is not a religion, can be so.

 

Christian 'historicity', which is conjoint with Jewish 'historicity', implies then no superiority in relation to other perspectives, nor any inferiority so long as the characteristic in question is situated at the level to which it rightfully belongs.

 

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Frithjof Schuon: The Sense of the Absolute in Religions (from Gnosis: Divine Wisdom)

 

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